Soddy, Frederick (1877–1956) British Physicist
Frederick Soddy was born at Eastbourne, Sussex, England,
on September 2, 1877, to Benjamin Soddy, a
London merchant. He was educated at Eastbourne College
and the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth.
After receiving a scholarship at Merton College,
Oxford, in 1895, he graduated three years later with
first-class honors in chemistry. After spending two
years doing research at Oxford, he moved to Canada,
and during 1900–02 he was demonstrator in the chemistry
department of McGill University, Montreal, working
with ERNEST RUTHERFORD on the problems of
radioactivity. He married Winifred Beilby in 1908.
From 1904 to 1914 he was a lecturer in physical chemistry
and radioactivity at the University of Glasgow,
and after teaching in Scotland, he was appointed professor
of chemistry at Oxford (1919–36).
He was one of the first to conclude in 1912 that
some elements can exist in forms that “are chemically
identical, and save only as regards the relatively few
physical properties which depend on atomic mass
directly, physically identical also.” He called them isotopes.
Later he promoted their use in determining geologic
age. He is credited (with others) with the
discovery of the element protactinium in 1917.
In 1921 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry
“for his contributions to our knowledge of the
chemistry of radioactive substances, and his investigations
into the origin and nature of isotopes.”
He published several books, including: Radioactivity
(1904), The Interpretation of Radium (1909), The
Chemistry of the Radioactive Elements (1912–14), Matter
and Energy (1912), Science and Life (1920), The
Interpretation of the Atom (1932), The Story of Atomic
Energy (1949), and Atomic Transmutation (1953).
Soddy died on September 22, 1956, at Brighton,
Sussex.